System does not see UEFI partition at boot

malonn · 2023-10-03 21:00:28

I have a boot issue. I was playing a game under Wine and the OS crashed. This is pretty common for me in my Linux experience. However, in the past ( on other distros), I would just boot back up into the OS. This time, however, my BIOS does not see my UEFI partition. I mean there is no entry for my SSD in my boot options. I ran a check and the drive is fine (it's pretty new anyway)

I have no idea what to do to fix this. I followed the wiki guide closely to install Arch. The only deviations from the guide were 1) I use btrfs as my FS and 2) I didn't thoroughly follow the GRUB page. I followed along enough to install Arch and all was good until now (pre-crash).

Please help if you can. I do not want to reinstall, and if I did something wrong with the GRUB installation I'd like to fix it. Odd how this did not happen on the 3 other distros I've used.

-thc · 2023-10-04 05:41:47

Prepare or obtain a bootable Arch usb key and boot your system from it.

ls /dev/nvme*

will reveal the NVMe drive and its partitions - for example "/dev/nvme0n1" (not "/dev/nvme0").

List the partitions with

gdisk -l /dev/nvme0n1

and post the output here.

malonn · 2023-10-04 09:10:18

The first command output was

zsh: no matches found: /dev/nvme*

The second command returned

Problem opening /dev/nvme0n1 for reading! Error is 2.  The specified file does not exist

I know my drive was identified as "nvme0n1". "nvme0n1p1", "nvme0n1p2" were the partitions I used. I made a fat32 boot partition and a btrfs partition with root and home subvolumes.

I did check my SSD for errors via my BIOS, which showed my drive is error free. I don't know if that check wipes the drive, but I doubt it.

Do I need to run chroot when I first boot the live ISO? I use Ventoy for my bootable USB needs.

malonn · 2023-10-04 09:35:24

I ran

fdisk -l

and my nvme drive isn't even showing up. All my other attached drives are. Odd. Something must be going on at the BIOS level. I'll have to check it out, but like I said, my SSD was recognized for a self-check and passed. Suggestions?

malonn · 2023-10-04 10:24:28

Alright. I know what the problem is. I checked it out and my SSD is definitely recognized by my BIOS. The contents of the SSD are hidden.

The solution is simple: wait/time. So, thanks for any help, but there is nothing anyone can do to assist. I must wait. Tomorrow morning I should be able to boot up just fine.

Tangential to my problem: does anyone have any experience stabilizing Wine? Some games (all post 2015) just crash the OS. I'm going to try the LTS kernel (never have), but other than that I have no ideas. Crashes on Mint, Nobara and Fedora. And now Arch. I've tried to look at the logs, but nothing is written about the crashes. It's like the crash happens before the OS can write a log.

V1del · 2023-10-04 11:23:47

Your wine issues and the problem you are having in this all sound like hardware problems to me.

Check temps or so during a wine session, run a memtest to make sure your RAM is fine: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Stress … MemTest86+ , run a SMART test to make sure your disk is fine. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/S.M.A.R.T.

malonn · 2023-10-04 11:29:38

I will start testing right now. Wine will have to wait until I get back into my OS. My SSD self-check passes, so is a SMART check going to reveal anything else? I'll run it for sure.

Thanks.

seth · 2023-10-04 11:52:55

I checked it out and my SSD is definitely recognized by my BIOS. The contents of the SSD are hidden.
The solution is simple: wait/time. … I must wait. Tomorrow morning I should be able to boot up just fine.

Errr… what? Mind to elaborate on why you conclude that mere waiting is gonna change anything?

malonn · 2023-10-04 12:49:16

Sorry for a "teaser", but I can't get into that. You wouldn't believe me anyway.

Running memtest. After 1 pass all is good. But I'm going to let it go a few hours.

I suspect I may have a motherboard issue. I say this because every time I cold boot--every time since I built this rig--my boot partition is not recognized. A reboot is fine--OS or BIOS--but not a cold boot. I put a feeler out n the MSI forums though. Get to the bottom of this puppy.

malonn · 2023-10-09 21:14:42

Alright. Here's an update to my problems:

The "time/waiting" problem is what it is. The Arch live env was not able to detect (lsblk or fdisk -l or whatever) my disks until the next day. There's nothing that can be done about that.

Next, I had a defective motherboard. I'm going to RMA that bad boy, but decided to try another manufacturer—ASRock. The defective m/b won't detect UEFI boot files on a cold boot. It was fine on a reboot.

Finally, for some reason, my Wine-induced OS crash corrupted the GRUB boot file. That was the crux of my issue; what caused me to reinstall Arch (I attempted to just reinstall GRUB, but was not successful. I know how to do it now though. You live, you learn), and here I am 5 days later posting an update.

So, that leads me to my question. What about a crash could cause a corrupted boot file? On other distros crashes didn't do that. Obviously, I'd like to prevent a similar corruption again. I assume it was corrupted, because GRUB was not showing in my BIOS boot options until a reinstall.

Hopefully someone can help harden my GRUB install... The only thing I've changed at this point is the boot directory (now it is /boot/efi) and my fstab (it now ends in 0 2 for dump and pass. It was 0 0 before, as I read somewhere that's "right").

-thc · 2023-10-10 05:31:35

You could try to keep the efi partition read-only (via fstab) and make it writable only while updating the bootloader.

I do this with a short shell script:

#!/bin/sh
sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
mount /efi -o remount,rw
sudo grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/efi --bootloader-id=GRUB [...]
mount /efi -o remount,ro

malonn · 2023-10-10 05:44:14

You do this with your daily driver? It's worth a shot, but I have a question. Here's my efi partition in fstab:

UUID=A599-A36A    /boot/efi    vfat    rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro 0 2

Do you see anything wrong with that? Also, how do I do what you suggest? Use the script mentioned above, but I run it only when I update grub? What about software upgrades via pacman and such?

-thc · 2023-10-10 06:12:40

My fstab entry looks exactly like that (with "ro" instead of "rw" ).

The EFI partition is never directly touched by any upgrades or pacman (you may not even mount it at all).

You only need to run the script after a grub update.

malonn · 2023-10-10 06:25:33

Alright. This is worth a shot, then.

A question about your script though. Why run grub-mkconfig ... before grub-install ...? I don't doubt you, I'm just trying to understand. I've been on Linux for 2 years, Arch for 2 weeks—of which I had to fully reinstall twice.

What would happen if you don't mount the EFI partition? Nothing bad? Sorry for all the questions.

-thc · 2023-10-10 06:45:25

malonn wrote:

Why run grub-mkconfig ... before grub-install ...?

The commands do different things in different directories and are independent. "grub-mkconfig" rewrites "grub.cfg" inside "/boot/grub". "grub-install" creates a new EFI binary in the EFI partition. The order doesn't matter.

malonn wrote:

What would happen if you don't mount the EFI partition? Nothing bad? Sorry for all the questions.

grub-install will only complain that either the target directory is missing or is read-only.

malonn · 2023-10-10 06:52:32

Alright cool, man. Thanks for hanging in there with me. I will copy your method and see what happens at my next crash, which there will be one. Some games and Wine...

malonn · 2023-10-10 07:29:40

Of course, prior to proceeding I must do my due diligence on your recommendation. I wonder about the details of your information...

malonn · 2023-10-10 07:47:55

Nah, I'll pass on that suggestion. The internet can help with a non-booting system.

I better re-read the forum guidelines and see if this site is intended to be reserved for extreme, search-engine-cannot-help questions.

Many methods can be taken to learn.

Arch Linux

#1 2023-10-03 21:00:28

System does not see UEFI partition at boot

#2 2023-10-04 05:41:47

Re: System does not see UEFI partition at boot

#3 2023-10-04 09:10:18

Re: System does not see UEFI partition at boot

#4 2023-10-04 09:35:24

Re: System does not see UEFI partition at boot

#5 2023-10-04 10:24:28

Re: System does not see UEFI partition at boot

#6 2023-10-04 11:23:47

Re: System does not see UEFI partition at boot

#7 2023-10-04 11:29:38

Re: System does not see UEFI partition at boot

#8 2023-10-04 11:52:55

Re: System does not see UEFI partition at boot

#9 2023-10-04 12:49:16

Re: System does not see UEFI partition at boot

#10 2023-10-09 21:14:42

Re: System does not see UEFI partition at boot

#11 2023-10-10 05:31:35

Re: System does not see UEFI partition at boot

#12 2023-10-10 05:44:14

Re: System does not see UEFI partition at boot

#13 2023-10-10 06:12:40

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#14 2023-10-10 06:25:33

Re: System does not see UEFI partition at boot

#15 2023-10-10 06:45:25

Re: System does not see UEFI partition at boot

#16 2023-10-10 06:52:32

Re: System does not see UEFI partition at boot

#17 2023-10-10 07:29:40

Re: System does not see UEFI partition at boot

#18 2023-10-10 07:47:55

Re: System does not see UEFI partition at boot

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